One Lord's Day afternoon a group of people gathered round a street preacher. Some apparently were listening; but two or three seemed bent on drowning his voice or frightening him into silence. The ringleader of these, in a thick, unsteady voice which told he was by no means sober, shouted just as I came up, "I've always done without Him." This was evidently his answer to the preacher's insistent statement, "you need Christ! You need Christ! For 'all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.'”
As the evangelist still went on speaking, his antagonist in yet louder, more defiant tones, shouted again: "I've always done without Him.”
That was all I heard—I had to hurry on; but that drunken man's words have often rung in my ears since. If he has not yet learned what a terrible confession he was making in his vaunted independence, may God open his heart to the truth before it is too late!
"The fool hath said in his heart... no God.”
Sinner, though lost you cannot do without God. Those boastful words of his were a lie. In the very God whose name he despised, he and you and I "live and move and have our being.”
In one sense they were but too true—true not only of the poor drunkard, but of everyone who has not yet had to do with God about his sins. Yes, the name of Jesus may be on the lips many times a day; but if the utterer of that name has not come into Christ's presence as a lost, helpless sinner, and by faith looked to Him as his Savior, he too "has always done without Him.”
What a terrible thing in the ages to come to look back upon the past and to have to say: "I have always done without Him." Then you would have to look on into the unending future and cry: "I shall always have to do without Him!”